Once in a while a camera hit’s the market that truly has innovative features that make you wonder why others haven’t done this before. The AVN80X has a feature called Push Video with 5 second event video call. When enabled, this sends an alert to your Android or IOS (iPhone/iPad) device and allows you to view the most recently recorded video. It is this feature that sets it apart from the rest.
Many cameras offer the ability to send an email alert or pictures via email, but it can take several minutes for the email to get to your smartphone. These are precious minutes because by the time you get it, the intruder could have left. In contrast, the Push Video feature sends you an alert in a few seconds. The app also lets you view live video and recorded video. You can also turn the alert on/off via the app so you control if you want to be alerted or not. The apps have a lite version that is free from the Apple App Store and the Android Market. This is the version I tested and it works flawlessly.

Additional features include 1.3 MP resolution, microSD card slot, PIR motion detect, white LED lighting and 2 way audio with built-in mic and speaker. The street prices are expected to be below $200 USD and represents a good value for the feature set. Since the appearance of the camera is very similar to the Axis M1031/M1054 and the price are below those two cameras, I thought it would be good to show you a comparison between these, starting off with the family photo, the Axis on the left, the popular Foscam in the middle and the AVTech on the right.

The camera is also simple to set up. It starts with a wizard to guide you or you can bypass the wizard and setup the camera through the menus.

When you first access the camera, after it’s configured, this is the screen you get showing the live view. From here you can manually record, take a snapshot, turn the LED on/off, control the microphone, view full screen and such.

In most of these images, clicking on the image will show you the full-sized larger image in a new window.

You configure the camera by selecting Config from the menu bar and the configuration options are selected from a navigation bar on the left. For example, Color option was selected and this was displayed allowing to alter brightness, contrast, hue and saturation.

The configuration screens were intuitive, comprehensive and simple to use.

To me, what really sets this camera apart was its image quality for this price point. It made the Axis M10 series and Foscam look bad. It was comparable in quality to cameras costing 2-3 times more. But me just telling you it’s great is not going to make a believer out of you, so I compared some of my shots against an AXIS M1031. The Axis sells for about $50-100 more, is only VGA resolution, but also has some of the same features like the white LED lighting, 2 way audio with mic & speaker and looks similar. The M1054 is closer in specification having 1 MP, but the M1054 has similar image quality to the M1031 and I didn’t have one at the moment for comparison.

First, this is a regular daytime image taken indoors with ample lighting. For the AVTech, I took the images at 720P, but I’ll show a full 1.3MP image at the end.

The same shot taken with the Axis camera –

As you can see, the AVTech image was clean, noise free, crisp compared to the Axis, even in a brightly lit room.

The next shots were taken in the early evening, representing a time when most people would be turning on lights inside their house.

The same shot taken with the Axis camera –

As you can see, the darker it gets, the Axis image gets more muted and noisier, the AVTech image holds up pretty well.

The last series of images I’ll show you is at night, almost complete darkness when the LED has to be on to see anything.

The same shot taken with the Axis camera –

At this point, the Axis camera’s built-in lighting and poor low light performance shows. The AVTech image has low noise, the lighting cast a wide light that’s fairly even and effective.

This outdoor shot was taken looking out a window.

This shows the live video screen using the free EagleEyes app both on an Ipad and a Droid X. In this landscape mode, the image takes up the entire screen –

In portrait mode, the image is smaller and displays additional buttons and settings.

Lastly, this is a full 1.3MP image from the camera. Click on the small image to view the full size image in a new window.

Conclusion

The AVTech AVN80X is a fantastic value. It provides very good image quality, HD resolution, PIR motion detect, 2 way audio with built-in speaker and microphone and their Push Video feature including free iPhone and Android apps. As I’ve said before, there’s no substitute for PIR motion detect, it’s 100% accurate for me and being able to record to an SD card means this camera can truly be standalone without the need for a NVR (recording) software running on a PC.

I would love to see this camera support Power over Ethernet (PoE). Currently, you have to supply separate power through the included power supply. They don’t offer a WiFi version but did include a very small (smallest I’ve ever seen) WiFi router/access point from Sapido to be used to make the camera WiFi capable, albeit with the external device and additional power supply.

Another feature I would like to see in future software releases is the option to record in higher resolutions and still use the Push Video feature. Currently, if you use the Push Video feature, you can only record in VGA mode to the SD card. I can understand why they did this, to allow you to view the video from your mobile device and high-resolution may be impracticable, but with newer 4G phones, this may be feasible.

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59 Responses to “AVTech AVN80X Review”

Great review, great pictures! It is by far the best camera for the price after reading all of your reviews.

What prevents someone at EagleEyes (the Company) either with this camera or a different manufacturer software/camera from logging into the camera and watching? Does the fact that the log in is hosted in another country (Taiwan) concern you?

I guess I must be missing something. I just do not want someone from watching me or even logging on or recording video coming from my cameras without my knowledge and consent. Is there a way to safeguard against this?

It still works like most cameras in that you have to setup port fowarding and DDNS to view it remotely and it requires a username and password and has the option of a captcha which I’ve never seen on any other camera, which is good enough for me, but you are correct in that there’s no https encryption for the stream itself. But most hackers would try and get in by a brute force password attack, but would be thwarted by the captcha, where that would be a lot easier to gain control of an Axis or Mobotix camera.

It is my understanding if an intruder enters your home and sees the camera and destroys it or steals it, all recordings are lost since they reside on the SD card. I believe the EagleEye software doesn’t record to your PC.

Would the Blue Iris software solve this issue and allow recordings of the intrusion regardless if the camera is stolen?

Yes, if someone steals the camera it takes all the recordings with them, a downside to an internal SD card. I did test the camera with BlueIris and you can have it record to a PC and hope they don’t steal the PC too. There’s 4 AVTech cameras it supports, pick the one that has h.264 support and it will work, the AVN80X is not specifically listed. To me, where the AVN80X plays it’s security role is the immediate alert and ability to view what’s going on at the moment. If someone grabs the camera, that’s OK, at least I know what’s going on, call 911 and have them deal with it.

Camera apps from vendors are a good way to go as they are optimized for that brand of camera. The only reason to use 3rd party apps like BlueIris is if you have a mix of cameras brands or if the brand you’ve chosen does not provide free software.

In theory, yes, assuminng you have the bandwidth to support it on both ends and not too much network latency because it will be transmitting all the time the 2 are connected, regardless of if it’s recording or not.

OK. I think I understand. So, if I only have a laptop that I take with me to use at work, then BlueIris should work anywhere I have an internet connection. I just wasn’t sure if my laptop had to be connected to my LAN at home in order for the BlueIris software to record video.

I have the ACM-4201 and image quality, price, resolution, low light capability is comperable. Both have 2 way audio and PIR motion detect. With some features like h.264 compression and higher frame rate, it’s more comperable to the TCM-4201 which is slightly more expensive. Where the AVN80X pushes past the 4201 is that is has an micro SD card slot making it easy for some people to record that don’t want to setup a PC and software to do this and it has free mobile phone apps for Android and IOS to alert you of an event and allow you to view live and recorded video from your smartphone and it has a very bright LED light for night viewing. Where the ACTi is better is that it’s a PoE camera and ACTi provides pretty decent NVR software and accompanying IOS app so easier to manage if you have several cameras.

This is a new product, but there are two places to get this in the US or at least I believe them to be in the US so check before you buy, I do not know them, but they are authorized resellers. The price I was given during the review was lower than what they sell for, and for that I appologize, I believe they are selling for $219 at the moment –

As for BlueIris, you can have it send an email alert, and of course that email can be your phone providers text message email, but there’s an inherent delay in sending and getting the email, sometimes 30 seconds later, sometimes I’ve gotten it minutes later where the alert from the AVN80X is direct from phone to Android or IOS app so it comes in a few seconds from the AVN80X. Next is what can you do with the BlueIris alert? You would have to connect to your camera through your phone’s browser and BlueIris does not have a way to view recorded video from non-IE browsers, so you are not getting to see what happened when the event was triggered. If you have BlueIris send you picture, it just further delays your alert. Next, you don’t have 2 way audio from BlueIris, so the IOS or Android app actually lets you listen and speak in situations where the subject is not withing visible range. Lastly, the motion detect on the AVN80X is via PIR which is highly accurate. BlueIris does it’s motion detect by analyzing video, so a shadow can trigger it and once you start getting false alarms, it makes a system less effective. I know I was getting 2-5 false alarms a day and eventually turned it off.

“Yes, if someone steals the camera it takes all the recordings with them, a downside to an internal SD card. I did test the camera with BlueIris and you can have it record to a PC and hope they don’t steal the PC too.”

My question is can you utilize the Push Video Feature and also have BlueIris send images to your email, which will provide some still pictures at an off-site location in case your camera is stolen?

You can have this camera not only you alert you, but also send an email or ftp to an external site. You can have BlueIris notify you also, so you get doubly notified. You can get a small Atom processor Nettop and hide it. My Zotac Zbox computer came with a vesa mount that attaches the computer to the back of monitor or TV. You can also put the PC in the attic and make it inaccessible to a thief and then use bluetooth mouse and keyboard to access it, maybe a VGA to RF converter to transmit the screen to your TV.

It looks like the same company owns both of those links. There are large number of reviews on the web for this camera so I’m guessing Avtech did a good job of prepping demand before it’s in the distribution channel.

I’m planning to buy one of these cameras, but I think I’ll wait for it to show up at some other dealers as I’m afraid closeoutCCTV might have an early firmware version of the camera. Plus I expect the price will drop below $200 as you predicted in your review.

Look on ebay, there’s deals now and then. I certainly pay more for the equivalent ACTi acm-4201, but not as good as the AVTech in many ways (frame rate, compression, built in lighting). As for firmware, mine came with an early version that had issues. They were quick to get me their latest firmware that provided fixes.

Yes, all IP cameras I’ve worked with have an option to update the firmware. When the AXIS M10 series came out, it was insanely buggy, I had to update firmware like once a month until it became stable. Same with Foscam, many things did not work correctly initially, but work well now. Now they are solid performers, but version 1 of any software from any company is going to have issues, I know, I’ve been working for software companies for some time now. I’m pleased with AVTech’s most recent firmware, no problems, at least in the way I use it, no stability issues at all.

It can be made wireless in conjunction with the sapido RB-1602 Wireless broadband router. I constantly move my AVN80X around the house each week. As far as the camera being stolen and recordings being lost, don’t forget if you have an iphone with eagleeyes plus installed it actually saves the footage as backup on your phone for evidence and then it can be emailed to the police for viewing.

They have a premium app that may have more functionality but I’m only using the free Android Eagleeyes app which lets me view live video, alert video (5 seconds from last alert) and the video events that recorded on the uSD card. I don’t think it writes anything to the phone but I was told the 5 second alert video is saved on the phone, where I don’t know.

Good review and I bought one based on it but am slightly dissapointed and I think a few things could be made clear for anyone else reading.

You will be lucky to get 10fps at full resolution, if everything is perfect you get 15fps in bursts but it moves up and down a lot. You’ll be lucky to get 30fps at 640×480 which should be easy for it. 720p is just a crude crop of 1280×1024, frame rate should improve here but it doesn’t.

White balance at night is very bad.

All of the test screenshots taken at night, both here and in the other reviews appear to be taken with the camera deep in ‘slow shutter’ mode, it makes a huge difference and looks great with hardly any noise but its such a slow shutter you get 1-3fps. With it off or at ‘1’ there is more noise than a $30 HP Webcam but at least its semi fluid. If you value motion at night you will have to suffer quite a lot of noise; it ruins encoding efficiency.

The interface is great looking but slow, unreliable, loses settings and breaks or hangs frequently. (I’m not using it anyway, steaming to BI)

Support don’t reply to emails.

Other than that lot it’s pretty good, nice build and daylight image quality is very very good, just a shame about the wandering fps.

The AVN80X works fine for me but when i tried to playback the recording on my windows vista pc it shows ‘failed to playback’. Windows xp pc doesnt give this problem, wonder why? i have tried to find the solution for almost a week. can anyone help?

I did try it with Vista, have an old laptop and I was able to view live video, make configuration changes, worked fine for me this past weekend. I think it was IE8 as I don’t let that laptop update, it’s too slow. What sort of problems have you run into with Vista?

Second Reply:
It works perfectly on our Windows Vista computer. Do you have any antivirus software, such as avvast!, on your Vista computer? If so, please turn off the protection when you view the recordings. Should you have any further questions, please let us know –
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When upgraded the firmware, the problem still existed.

When i disabled my AVG antivirus, the playback was fine. So everytime i need to view the recording, i have to disable the AVGantivirus.

Hi, I’ve read many of your posts on networkcamerareviews, and also your reviews here. So my budget is not high, and I guess my options are either this or the ACTI cube. I rather liked the instructable on mounting a camera in lamp housing. So for outdoors, is the CUBE camera better? since it’s IR cut? What if I mount motion sensing lights?

Also, how tangible is the difference between this and the foscam? Those are much cheaper and wireless… I had my car stolen from me from my driveway, I only need to see clearly within 15 feet…
Thanks
luke

An advantage of the ACTi cube is that it’s PoE and takes a cs mount lens, but both are good cameras. Neither have an automatic IR cut filter, both are day only cameras, both have the same resolution, good image quality, PIR motion detect, audio, both indoor cameras, the AVtech has the push video and is priced lower than ACTi. Using motion activated lights will help either camera at night. Foscam is not in the same league, they are VGA (or 1/4th the resolution), night camera only, WiFi, image quality is soft, but they are cheap. During the day, the Foscam will show green trees as purple/pink/gray, blacks may show as light blue, it’s the nature of not have an IR filter. The built in IR emmitters on the FI8918W do well for about 10′.

Thanks for the reply! I looked on youtube for video streams, and I found that the logitech 750e had surprisingly good quality. Better than the few ACTI clips I found. Any thoughts? Also have you seen the news coming out of CES? seems like quite a few IP cameras are coming, dlink, samsung, etc…

I think I have an aversion towards brands like Axis, ACTi, because they’re not pc accessory brands, and hence charge a much more substantial markup. I feel with those brands, only $600 and up products look good.

Nothing ever comes out of CES for surveillence cameras, went the last 3 years and nothing. Skipped this year because it gets old after a while, same old stuff, like TV’s with more apps, how many do you need before you just have a 70″ tablet. The only IP camera I saw there last year was from a Czech company that had GSM camera, but that was it and that was probably because they didn’t know better, being a new company. I believe the next show that’s relavent is ICS West in Vegas in March. As far as Logitech, they don’t make the cameras, they just find companies in China that are making them, throw their branding on it. Same with D-Link. I had an Ipcam (that’s the brand), made in China, Dlink rebrands it as theirs, even had to specify Dlink in BlueIris to make it work. I can’t even get Logitech to respond to support on simple headphones I bought from them, don’t know if their tech support would even know what to do for IP cams. So why Axis, ACTi, Mobotix, AVTech, because the software is stable, reliable, put the camera in service and it’s good for many years, not sure you get that from PC brand as they cater to a different mindset, a product that’s built to be disposable.

I have a question about this camera. I have a AVN314 so it’s almost the same.
When you add a﻿ new ‘normal’ account, can the visitor hear audio?
Mine can’t, then there is no audio available. Strange, because the manual says there will be audio when you add an account ‘normal’.

Hi Peter,
You can’t record continuously to the SD card. You can however change the manual record time to a maximum 10 minutes at this stage and that is using firmware 1039. The only other option is to record all the time via VideoViewer.
If you tick all the options in the “trigger” part of settings you won’t miss out on anything that’s for sure :)

Thanks for this. I want to use use the camera through a window to detect motion outside. I’m ticking motion in the Trigger settings but Record in the Actions secion below only gives the options of external and PIR and not motion. Is there a way of recording to the SD card when motion is detected using the camera through a window? If I undertand correctly I can get a 5 second video emailed to me when motion is detected but I dont see a way to record to the SD card.

I’m also having problems setting up the email alert for motion detection. The server log is showing that the alerts are bing detected but it always says email failed. I’m setting up the outgoing mail server details correctly (mail server, port number, user name and password) so I dont know why it doesnt work.

Peter, the most common mistake and I’ve made it myself is when you setup a fixed IP address, you may have not setup the DNS correctly. Run the DOS nslookup command on your PC, it will tell you the DNS server it’s using and give you a prompt, type in exit to end the program. Use that address for DNS in the camera’s network configuraiton. The reason is because you probably setup the domain name for the email server, like smpt.mymail.com, the DNS server does the translation between domain name and IP address. By using the wrong one, it can’t find your email server. It usually gives you 2 places for DNS server, for the second one I always use 4.4.4.2 which is a universal one.

Thanks but I’m confused! The current DNS1 address in the camera’s network config is a public DNS server in Taiwan so presumably that’s what I need to change. When I run command nslookup it just gives me the private IP address of my router. Surely my DNS server should have a public IP address.

I’m still not managing to send email alerts for motion detection in spite of trying all sorts of server addresses in the Network and Mail config settings. I have two AVN80X cameras and the server log for one of them is showing failed emails but the log for the other is not despite all settings being the same and testing the motion detection by walking in front of the camera in the same way. I used to see failed emails from the server logs both cameras so I dont know why this has changed.

I agree that this is a very good camera when you have it set up but the manuals are very poor as they mainly list the config screens without actually explaining how to set up anything.

I agree with you that the manuals are very limited but I will try and help you with this. Do you have an email address that I can send you screen shots of how to setup email motion alerts for you?
Also it helps to know what web browser/email client and operating system you are trying to set this up on. One last thing is what firmware version is your AVN80X on?
I am in the process of capturing screenshots of each setting for the AVN80X, AVN801 and AVN812 and will be putting them all on blogspot so everyone can see in detail how to generally setup these great IP Cameras.

Thanks for this, I’m sure screen shots of the config settings will help a lot of users. I was also contacted by Carl who runs this blog and I sent him screen shots for network and mail config settings. He spotted that I didnt have my email address in ‘Mail from’ as I thought this was just a friendly name to be included in the automated email. I changed this to my email but still didnt get eamil alerts. Hoever I continued to experimant and I’m now getting alerts from one of my two cameras after removing ‘check password’ in Mail config. This is odd becase all my other wireless connected devices require outgoing serer authentication. I havent checked to see if this together with the change in ‘Mail from’ was needed. My second camera still doesnt send emails in spite of making these two changes so I need to continue to experiement. I still think its a great camers though some aspects of set-up do appear to be hit and miss.

Only if you use their DDNS but you can use other DDNS servers on your network. Usually the best place to start is to see what DDNS services are supported by your router. You only need one device (PC, router, camera) on your network to keep the DDNS domain name up to date. Aternatively, you can ask your ISP for fixed IP address and use that instead.

can someone please help i cannot view my camera on my smartphone only on my home wifi i have already configured port fowarding and its still not working ive searched and searched read the manual many diffrent times still no luck

Read my article on port forwarding. Did you set a static IP for the camera? Do you know what your WAN address is to access it remotely or are you using a DDNS service? Try going to a neighbors house and see if you can ping your WAN address, see if you can connect to the camera using a PC from their network.

An IP address is how a devie is found on a network like your home address is how people find your home. Normally, addresses are assigned automatically by your router. This is called DHCP. Most cameras come from the factory setup to use DHCP. Your router assigns it a random address and then you have no clue what it is. So you use the camera finder program to find what the IP address of your camera is. Once you connect to the camera for the first time, it’s a good idea to give a fixed address you will be able to save as a bookmark on your browser so you’ll always find it. The fixed IP address is called a static IP.

If you know how to enter into a command window in Windows, then enter the command ipconfig and that will show you lots of information about your network settings on your PC, like it’s IP address, the subnet mask and default gateway, all important in setting a static IP address on your camera.

Hello, I bought this Cam and configured everything ok. But where can I change the duration of triggered events? I get 5 sec.of Video (Full Resolution) on the inserted SD-Card and also via FTP.
Another issue is that audio from PC to Cam (activating the mic symbol on Live view) stopps after some seconds
Thank you all and I love this site.